I seem to remember over on the Dan Lepard site Mick from Bethesda Bakers mentioned, but didn't describe, a brown rice starter he keeps for GF breads. He also had a pic of some very healthy yummy looking GF rice and brazil nut bread. It was on a GF thread which featured a Dan GF white flour mix and recipe. Sorry I don't have time to insert a link (doing that would take me a Long time!)

I seem to remember over on the Dan Lepard site Mick from Bethesda Bakers mentioned, but didn't describe, a brown rice starter he keeps for GF breads. He also had a pic of some very healthy yummy looking GF rice and brazil nut bread. It was on a GF thread which featured a Dan GF white flour mix and recipe. Sorry I don't have time to insert a link (doing that would take me a Long time!)

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I think this is the thread with the rice, brazil nut, and linseed loaf:

I don't see mention of a brown rice starter there though, but looked further, and cor blimey, yes, Mick does maintain a brown rice starter which he mentions (but doesn't give details about) in this thread:

I feel a bit guilty about not having posted for about eighteen months - I've been busy.

True confessions - now I'm going to feel more guilty - my brown rice flour starter was kick-started with a tiny bit of my basic wheat levain. On the other hand it has been refreshed regularly for over a year so the proportion of wheat in it must be infinitesimal by now.

I don't know what amount of wheat results in an adverse effect but I'm sure your customers do by now Mick, so good on you for providing them with some nutritional relief.

On Dan Lepard's forum Jack Lang has calculated that refreshing 10g wheat starter with 200g each GF flour and water 6 times reduces the wheat component to 1 in 64million. I'm going to try this with my sister as guinea pig, I'm sure she won't mind (I'll tell her first), and bake the bread in the wood oven. It's off to the shops for xanthan gum, soy flour and potato starch, and to check out the ingredients in Lauke GF flour - which may be a 'mix', ie 'just add water'...

I don't know what amount of wheat results in an adverse effect but I'm sure your customers do by now Mick, so good on you for providing them with some nutritional relief.

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May depend on the person, but I've known someone who found the commercial "gluten free" flours to be sufficiently problematic as to be unusable. Something similar to "may contain traces of nuts ..." due to reuse of production lines, perhaps? This was 20 years ago, mind; I doubt the physiology has changed, but the production lines or processes may have.

[quote=lily]

On Dan Lepard's forum Jack Lang has calculated that refreshing 10g wheat starter with 200g each GF flour and water 6 times reduces the wheat component to 1 in 64million.

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That's getting challenging to measure, so I'd be amazed if that much caused a problem. Indeed, simple contamination (how much of the airborne dust in my kitchen is wheat flour?) might match it.

Today somebody said that a tiny smidge of gluten contamination may act like a homeopathic amount of medicine. It's just about unmeasurable but still could cause a problem. If I were to sell some of this bread how would I label it? 'Bakery also produces wheat products'?

I do like your point about the question of airborn contamination. Plenty of cafes around here make GF cakes alongside wheat etc ones and it hasn't been a point of contention that I know of. It'd be bad to make someone ill.

I do like your point about the question of airborn contamination. Plenty of cafes around here make GF cakes alongside wheat etc ones and it hasn't been a point of contention that I know of.

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I think that's the [i]practical[/i] take-away point: clean equipment and benches is as good as any home and most commercial kitchens can manage, and it's demonstrably good enough for safe food for most people.